Poland’s opposition Conservatives (PiS) have attacked Volodymyr Zelensky after the Ukrainian president had met with the centre-left Tusk government’s presidential candidate Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski during his visit to Warsaw on January 15.
During the visit, Zelensky had criticised the PiS presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki.
Zelensky, who visited both Polish PM Donald Tusk and the PiS aligned president Andrzej Duda during his day in Warsaw, found time to meet Trzaskowski and to present an award to the Warsaw mayor for his efforts in support of Ukraine.
PiS politicians have accused Zelensky for “brazen interference” in the Polish presidential election due to take place in May of this year.
Nawrocki, the PiS candidate in the presidential poll on January 12, had stated that he “did not envision Ukraine in the EU or NATO” until the country resolved issues relating to the Volhynia massacre in which Ukrainian nationalists slaughtered over 100,000 ethnic civilian Poles during the course of the Second World war.
The PiS candidates’ comments caused anger in Kyiv which accused him of contributing to hostile efforts by Russia to undermine Polish-Ukrainian relations.
During his visit to Warsaw Zelensky was asked by reporters about Nawrocki’s comments and replied that “if Ukraine is not in the EU and is not in NATO, if Ukraine does not have a guarantee of security, then Mr Nawrocki should start training already, because it may turn out that he will have to take up arms to defend his country together with his compatriots.”
“After Ukraine, Russia will be on Poland’s border and then Nawrocki will not have political contests, he will be fighting for his life,” added Zelensky.
The Ukrainian president’s behaviour prompted fury from PiS politicians, who accused him of interfering in Poland’s election.
Former Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki speaking on independent Radio Wnet on January 16 advised Zelensky to mind his own business.
“Ukraine’s president should take care of Ukrainian affairs and leave Poles to elect their president. He has a right to defend the interests of his own country but we will decide on who are candidates are and what views they present”, he said.
“Volodymyr Zelensky is brazenly engaged in the election campaign in Poland on the side of Rafał Trzaskowski and attacks Karol Nawrocki, who is a Polish politician and who defends Polish interests,” PiS MP Janusz Kowalski wrote on platform X.
Michał Dworczyk MEP was more diplomatic in his remarks to Polish Press Agency (PAP) whom he told that Zelensky’s remarks “constituted interference in Poland’s election” and were “ill advised. Clearly the Ukrainian president’s advisors had failed to do their homework,” he added.
Trzaskowski, asked by reporters about Zelensky’s behaviour, sided with the Ukrainian president. “Above all, I would like no one in Poland to get involved in the campaign on Putin’s side. Let’s be honest and straightforward: anyone who says at the moment that Ukraine should not be in NATO is actually supporting Putin.”
Nawrocki, whose poll ratings have risen just as Trzaskowski’s have been falling, doubled down on his stance regarding Ukraine saying that while he has “a sense of deep solidarity with Ukraine” in its defence against Russian aggression, he does not believe it can join Western institutions until it deals with the legacy of the Volhynia massacres.
On January 10 Tusk claimed that a breakthrough had been made on the issue of exhuming victims of the Volhynia massacre, tens of thousands of whom remain buried in unmarked mass graves in Ukraine.
But despite media reports suggesting that Zelensky’s visit to Warsaw would see further details emerge on the issue, the Ukrainian president said no more about the issue than he had been saying for the past few years, with just a general remark that the two countries were working towards a solution.
Relations between Zelensky and PiS were very good in the period immediately following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 when the conservative government unreservedly backed Ukraine but they deteriorated steadily as Zelensky dragged his feet on Volhynia and the Polish government took action against Ukrainian food imports.
